


Rebooting

by ottermo



Series: As Prompted [90]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23169535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: ”I should never have gone. I know it now, but like you said. It’s too late.”She had said that. Even now, she thinks it’s true but can’t stop hoping, somewhere, that it’s not.Leo and Mattie are left alone together for the first time since the events of 3x8.
Relationships: Leo Elster/Mattie Hawkins
Series: As Prompted [90]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/360089
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	Rebooting

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Humans Challenge back in August!

“So I guess Niska really wanted the two of us to talk,” Mattie says dryly, staring out at the road ahead of them.

Leo hums in what could be amusement. “She never was very subtle.”

They had been spun some tale about an important supply run, and Niska had given each of them the distinct impression that she would be their sole travelling companion.

Then something had “come up” and she’d had to stay at the base, leaving Mattie and Leo alone in each other’s company for the first time in almost nine weeks.

“I don’t know, at least she used to have some class with it,” Mattie muses. “Since becoming the violet queen she thinks she can just order us around.”

“Well,” says Leo, “Since she’s not here, she can’t make us talk.”

Taken aback for a second, Mattie can only blink in response to that.

“Wow,” she says, eventually. “And here I was, offering the olive branch.”

“Is that what that was? It sounded like you just want me to side against my sister.”

Mattie huffs. “Oh my God, Leo, I was joking. I was just trying to lighten the mood. I’m sick of this… thing, where we pretend to be strangers. We’re not strangers.”

“What are we, then?” he asks, tone only a little less hostile. “We’re not strangers, but we’re not exactly friends either.”

“Yeah, and whose…”

She bites off the end of the sentence. “Forget it.”

For a few moments, they just drive.

Eventually, Leo says quietly, “Mine.”

Where does he get off, answering a question she never even finished asking? Mattie could laugh, honestly. Or she could cry. Instead all she says is, “You were going to leave me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Then you were going to come back, and I… I could just see the rest of my life being like that. I’d just get used to you being around, and then something would happen to scare you off. And that’s bad enough if it’s just me.” She shudders, just a little. “I won’t do that to a kid.”

The silence afterwards is palpable.

“Say something,” she prompts him, when he doesn’t. “Let’s do this now, if we’re ever going to do it.”

“I don’t know what there is to say,” he tells her, sounding like a thing half strangled. “I should never have gone. I know it now, but like you said. It’s too late.”

She had said that. Even now, she thinks it’s true but can’t stop hoping, somewhere, that it’s not.

“I had a plan,” she says, through a deep breath. “The night…” _the night Mia died_ , she doesn’t say, “I was going to trade the Day Zero story for my mum’s freedom. I’d’ve had a prison abortion, easy, done, it would have all been over with.”

“So what happened?”

“Niska happened.”

“Oh.”

“So you see, this road trip isn’t her first move in this game.”

Leo looks solemn. “She manipulated you?”

“No, she—”

Mattie considers.

“If she did,” she amends, “it was for the greater good, or whatever.”

He takes this in, hands gripping the steering wheel a little tighter, perhaps. Or perhaps she’s imagining it.

“Anyway, she stopped me. For whatever reason, it doesn’t matter. I just… you should know what I really meant.”

She wills him to work it backwards, to figure out what she means without her having to expound any further.

“What you meant about what?”

Yeah, maybe that was too much to ask.

“As in, I was going to prison. I didn’t want to be talked out of it.”

“Not by me, anyway.”

“Not by anyone. Niska fights dirty, she doesn’t count.”

“Okay.”

She can’t tell if he’s there yet, wishes she wasn’t so out of touch. Looking at him now, she can no more tell what he’s thinking than she could read his mind while he was in the coma.

“So,” he says at length, “Maybe it’s not too late, after all. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Thank God. “Yes.” She shifts in her seat, suddenly uncertain. This changes everything, breaks that easy illusion she’s been leaning on all this time. “It’s still pretty late, though.”

He takes a breath that might be a laugh, might be a gasp, might be sob. “I’ll take it. It’s more than I deserve.”

“I’m not… trying to be rash,” she warns him. “I’m just giving you context. It _was_ too late, but mainly for those reasons that don’t exist anymore. I didn’t consider any other possibility in that moment and I still don’t know how I feel or how any of this would work.”

The words come thick and fast, because she’s imagined saying this part so many times. At the end of it, she takes a deep breath. Then lets it go.

He waits, and she’s grateful for it, even if it’s just that he’s at a loss for words.

“I meant it earlier, about you coming and going. That’s no life for your child. Your next out would be your last one ever.”

She sighs. “Because… I can forgive cold feet on day one. I get it. Neither of us chose this. But now it’s different, now it’s a choice. In or out.”

“In,” he says, without missing a beat.

“Don’t rush into anything,” she says, not trying to be witty. “I need you to be sure.”

“In,” he says again, with even more feeling this time. “I’m in, I promise.”

She feels her heart swell, tries not to give into the warmth just yet. It’s hard, though. Whether or not it’s good for her, she doesn’t know how to keep her distance.

It’s something they have in common, at least. At the earliest opportunity, Leo pulls over to the side of the road and shifts diagonally, so he’s as much opposite her as he can be in the front of the van.

The silence is heavy with expectations, with fear, with hope.

“Damn it,” Mattie says, oh-so-softly. “Niska totally got us.”

“Can we stop talking about my sister?”

She giggles, and the spell breaks. “We can stop talking altogether.”

And maybe she’s mad. Maybe she’s stupid and shortsighted and far too forgiving. Maybe. But she kisses him there by the side of the road and the whole world resets, reboots, rights itself at last.

So maybe she’s mad.

If she’s honest, she kind of wants to be.


End file.
